Abstract
Sexual harassment is more prevalent for women supervisors than for women employees. This pattern holds in the three countries we studied – the United States, Japan, and Sweden – where women supervisors are between 30 to 100 percent more likely to have been sexually harassed in the last twelve months. Among supervisors, the risk is larger in lower- and mid-level positions of leadership and when subordinates are mostly male. We also find that harassment of women supervisors happens despite their greater likelihood of taking action against the abuser, and that supervisors face more professional and social retaliation after their harassment experience. We conclude that sexual harassment is a workplace hazard that raises the costs for women to pursue leadership ambitions and, in turn, reinforces gender gaps in income, status, and voice.
Highlights
Sexual harassment is more prevalent for women supervisors than for women employees
Pioneering research on sexual harassment in the 1970s was focused on exactly this type of scenario.[1]
We probe the mechanisms behind the paradox by comparing, first, if women supervisors are harassed by different types of perpetrators and, second, if supervisors take different types of action after they are harassed
Summary
Sexual harassment is more prevalent for women supervisors than for women employees. This pattern holds in the three countries we studied–the United States, Japan, and Sweden–where women supervisors are between 30 to 100 percent more likely to have been sexually harassed in the last twelve months. Because the United States and Japan did not have comparable data, we collected original survey data in these two countries, which in turn allowed us to ask more detailed questions to understand the mechanisms of sexual harassment exposure and reporting.
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